The only place in the world where crops grow themselves

Hi, fellow ATSers! I'd like to tell you about an amazing place in China where rapeseed crops grows themselves! No, you don't reap what you sow there;
you reap what you don't sow!

There's an area of 200 sq. km in Xingshan County, Hubei, China, where farmers don't have to plant seeds to grow rapeseed. Every winter, the locals
will chop down all the shrubs on the hill; when spring comes, there will be a shower, and rapeseed will start emerging from nowhere. By April, the
entire area will be covered in rapeseed like this (www.publicdomainpictures.net... not in
Xingshan, but rapeseed looks the same everywhere):

According to a local farmer, the 20 villages in the area have benefited from this strange phenomenon for a long time. Each family can harvest over 60
kg of rapeseed every year, which is more than enough to make a living. In 1935, there was a giant flood in winter which was so bad that it uprooted
every tree on the hill. Next spring, the rapeseed popped up as usual.

The local rumour has it that Wang Zhaojun, one of four beauties of Ancient China and a native of Xingshan, returned to Xingshan before being married
of to the Xiongnu. She planted rapeseed seeds and chanted, 'sprout repeatedly, sprout repeatedly, sprout every year'. Although that's just a legend,
no scientist has been able to come up with a good explanation yet, although many have visited the area and proposed theories.

Strangely, this amazing place has received very little attention; if Google is correct, this should be the first English webpage on the mystery. Maybe
Monsanto doesn't want us to know about it so that they can keep producing genetically modified rapeseed...

Speaking of amazing crops, there's another amazing piece of farmland in Yuelai, Shizhu, Sichuan, China. Among the many terraced fields in the
monastery, there are five where no matter what species of rice you sow, you always get high-quality aromatic rice! (In case you didn't manage to
figure it out, aromatic rice is a type of rice with an aroma.) Here's a picture of the field (this is an actual picture of the area, unlike the pic
above):

Like the rapeseed of Xingshan, these crops are not affected by droughts or floods. You get sweet, aromatic rice in these five fields, regardless of
the weather.

The rice is so good that, during the Han Dynasty, commoners were not allowed to eat it. Government officials would have farmers harvest the crops and
bring them to the imperial court for the Emperor and his family to enjoy. That's why this rice is also known as 'imperial rice'.

Science doesn't have a definite answer for this field, either. The Qianlong Emperor wrote in a poem that this was due to the good 'earthly qi'. Some
scientists believe that there's an unknown mineral in the soil that can control the water content in the soil and encourage plant growth, which would
explain the drought- and flood-proof crops, but not the fact that they turn into aromatic rice.

Wow that is interesting.
For those that may not know. Rapeseed oil does have much more user friendly name. Canola oil.
it's one of the healthier vegetable oils.
I my be wrong, but I think Diesel engines are happy to ingest this oil as well.

Having not done much other research on this, I wonder is regular rapeseed farmers have a high percentage of "volunteer" crop from year to year.

That's amazing. Not much to add just that many here in the states will recognize the crop as Canola as Rapeseed was deemed unmarketable by our
capitalist overlords.
***damn I'm much too slow for this***

SO what your saying is that rapeseed is an 'annual' and even though they don't replant, every spring, the rapeseed returns anyway? That seems
pretty darn awesome, but you are also saying that this isn't the only place in China where this occurs? Are these ancestoral farms? It sounds
fascinating, that an annual plant would produce such consistent yields year after year without re-planting! But then again, China has been doing some
pretty amazing things for a very, very long time!

Yep, the rapeseed returns every year, no replanting needed, and yes, those are ancestral farms. The old farmer said that he had been consuming the
rapeseed since he was born, and so were the generation before him. That means they've been eating those crops for at least 150 years or so. If the
legend is true, though, then they've been passing down the land since 33 BC, which was two millennia ago!

As far as I know, this is the only place in China where rapeseed springs out of nowhere, but as I wrote later in the OP, it's not the only place
where crops are flood-proof and drought-proof.

It begs to be looked into by agriculturalists... umm, not from Monsanto, though. They'd napalm it and kill any one within talking distance if they
could... and given the corruption in the Chinese govt they still might... so maybe you just endangered an entire local pop by letting this secret
out.

But why, assuming the info is good, is this so rare? Crops occurred before we reaped and sowed. Annuals would die and shed seeds and spring back in
...uh, spring... something about Demeter, yada yada.

Nature does pretty well by herself. Peasants with hoes are just a sometimes bonus.

Its a perennial.
Canada would have the same thing if we weren't overrun by Monsato.
In Saskatchewan where it grows as a main crop, it also comes up in ditches, and little patches in some yards. Mingled in with the clovers, and
chicory. Wild plants.

Even the farms that grow it as a crop don't water. It's somehow a hardy crop, that just does better if the weather is good for it.
Except that now the crops are mostly gmo.

I'm actually surprised that I had any in my yard, as Monsato has taken over Canada too

It's beautiful (even though gmo) when the fields are in bloom.

That stuff growing in China, is way healthier than any grown in North America.

Maybe people just forget how the cycle of life works when corporations stay out of it?
Plants grow, they go to seed, seed falls in dirt, another plant grows, and the process repeats. Over and over.
Nature.

I was originally thinking some of the posts were sarcasm, but I don't know?
It's hard to tell on the Internet.

Those canola fields in China, are in a zone where the conditions are right, and it's not genetically modified, therefore just reseeds itself.

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